Keeping Toxins Out of Our Future

Chemical toxins are an increasingly serious threat to human and environmental health worldwide, according to Global Chemicals Outlook, a report that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released on September 5. The report also sees great economic and health dividends for the whole world community if governments and businesses work together to maximize chemical management and safe use.

“While chemicals are a significant contributor to national economies, sound chemical management across the life cycle—from extraction to disposal—is essential to avoid significant risks to human health and to the environment along with their associated economic costs, and to maximize benefits for human well-being,” the report states.

In sub-Saharan Africa, according to the report, pesticide-related illnesses and injuries will cost an estimated $90 billion total between 2005 and 2020. And globally, more than one million people die annually from poisonings by industrial and agricultural chemicals, a total that makes consumer chemical exposure one of the top five causes of death worldwide.

The problem isn’t simply that people are using more chemicals, and in larger volumes—though they are, and usage keeps going up. The report projects sales of chemicals worldwide to increase 3% a year to 2050.

Just as important, wealthy nations’ businesses have been relocating much production to developing countries where safety regulations are laxer. The report notes that communities throughout the developing world are increasingly replacing the natural ceramics and plant extracts, traditional ingredients of their market wares, with synthetic ones such as petrochemicals, dyes, detergents, and adhesives.

According to the report, Africa and the Middle East will both see increases of around 40% in chemical production between now and 2020; Latin America, a 33% rise. Chances of accidental leakages and spillovers in these regions will rise, as a result, and so will the numbers of people living in harm’s way. Case in point: The bathing and drinking water of an Ecuadorean village near an oil-extraction site had concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbons 288 times higher than European Community standards.

Affluent nations have been providing aid to developing countries for decades. But it does little good to provide a region with development funds and then sabotage development with costly new pollution and contamination.

“Pollution and disease related to the unsustainable use, production and disposal of chemicals can, in fact, hinder progress towards key development targets by affecting water supplies, food security, well-being, or worker productivity,” the report states.

And by the way, chemical exposure is not just a developing-world problem. A 2009 study assessed 212 different chemicals and found levels of each one within some percentage of the U.S. population. Also, an estimated 75% of Europe’s e-waste and 80% of the United States’ e-waste go unaccounted for.

Additionally, in developed and developing regions, pesticide and fertilizer runoff is turning large swaths of coastal waters into oxygen-poor “dead zones.” Fishing industries throughout the globe shrivel or go out of business.

Dangerous industrial pollutants have to be kept under tight control, but often are not.(credit: MCS-GLobal)

On the other hand, the world community could gain greatly in economic productivity and public health if it steps up management of chemicals. Proof is in Indonesia and Ecuador, where farms have adopted “integrated pest management” (IPM) techniques that combat crop pests via crop rotation, deployment of pest-eating insects, and other non-chemical methods. The Ecuadorean farms that implemented IPM maintained their production rates while lowering production costs 20% and reducing rates of pesticide-related neurological problems.

Indonesia’s farmers have used IPM to cut their own use of pesticides by 50% while increasing farm yields 10%. Since 2001, the Indonesian government has been working to expand IPM throughout the Indonesian farming sector by 2020. Government estimates are that achieving the goal would lead to an increase of up to 5% in average household income, coupled with 20,000 fewer cases of acute poisonings among rice-farmers over the 2001-2020 period.

Many other economic sectors besides farming stand to grow if chemical management improves. For instance, the UNEP report states that phasing out leaded fuel would give the global economy a return benefit of $2.45 trillion—4.5% of annual GDP.

The report calls for every government to integrate chemical management across the board, as comprehensive, nationwide, multi-agency initiatives. Monitoring chemical pollution levels, analyzing their environmental and health impacts, and discerning the economic costs of continued pollution all need to be part of the package.

Governments must work closely with manufacturers and civic associations. And they should help each other as needed: Affluent countries can provide developing countries with critical technical assistance and financing.

“Sound chemicals management is as valid an area as education, transport, infrastructure, direct health care services and other essential public services. This could foster the creation of many green, decent and healthy jobs and livelihoods for developed and developing countries,” said Maria Neira, WHO director for public health and environment, in the report.

The environment is now largely an afterthought in U.S. public policy. Canada, traditionally a very green country, has unfortunately been following America’s bad example in recent years. And while China and many other emerging economies espouse concern for the environment, they still host severe problems of pollution. The understandable push for job creation and ensuring that people can eat drowns out calls of alarm over forests and waterways.

But the growing hazards of chemical exposure demonstrate aptly that economic progress and environmental health are not so mutually exclusive. We need the latter if we want the former.

Nonetheless, entrenched business interests will oppose change. And the increasing ease with which multinationals transfer operations overseas to bypass activists and regulators back home, while simultaneously amassing profits that they use to lobby those same lawmakers, ensures that they will be formidable adversaries. Just compare the meager operating budget of UNESCO with that of Monsanto, and you’ll see the blatant power imbalance.

Social-justice advocates who recognize the interplay of environmental and human well-being have the work cut out for them. Time, and their own capacity to reach across national borders to get things done globally, will decide how the contest plays out.